Meritocracy Matters
by Dr. Doug Cardell
Over the past fifty years or so, the political mores have increasingly shifted away from the meritocracy of the previous 200 years in favor of a misguided attempt to help 'disadvantaged' classes. First, we must reject the concept that classes, entire groups, can be 'disadvantaged.' Individuals from every 'class' have succeeded in the United States through their individual merit and effort. Yes, I know that some groups have suffered from various forms of discrimination, but those days, thankfully, are largely gone. Second, the answer to discrimination is not to weaken meritocracy but to strengthen it. The 2024 Summer Olympics have just finished in Paris. Take a look at the US Olympic athletes. It is one of the few places left where merit is the basis of success, and you will see as diverse a group as exists anywhere. The diversity displayed in the US Olympic team shows conclusively that 'helping' particular groups or classes doesn't help. To be clear, everyone should have the opportunity to develop their abilities and work toward excellence. Lowering standards for some will never achieve this. It's a dangerous path that leads to mediocrity and undermines the value of hard work. Ask any of those Olympic athletes, and they will tell you that they got there by holding themselves to a higher standard. Meritocracy breeds diversity. How is this possible? Because merit is blind. It favors no race, religion, or culture. It favors individual talent and effort. To claim otherwise is the same as saying some groups are inherently inferior to others. The evidence clearly shows everyone is capable of excellence. Why does any of this matter? Because our national welfare and your personal welfare depend on it. Think back: how many times have you been inconvenienced or harmed in the past month because someone else didn't do their job right? We live in a far more interdependent world than most people realize. When you go to the grocery store and shop for the coming week or two, your satisfaction depends on the efforts of hundreds, maybe thousands of people in dozens of countries. A group of people in South America probably picked your coffee. Another group there picked your bananas. Your milk may have come from a dairy farm in Wisconsin where a dozen people worked for months to raise the cows, maintain the pastures, provide feed and water, and ultimately milk the cows. Of course, other people who the dairy farmers had never met built the factory that produced the milk carton your milk came in, and many more working in that factory handled the carton's production. This tale is just the beginning. If those cartons were cardboard, foresters and lumberjacks grew and felled the trees to make them. The trees were sent to a sawmill to be processed, and some of the pulp was shipped to a cardboard manufacturer to create the cardboard. They were probably coated in polyethylene plastic derived from petroleum that oil drillers pumped out of the ground, and refinery operators extracted the necessary chemicals to create the plastic. They were printed and assembled in another factory using machines designed by industrial engineers and built by skilled workers. Then, the operators used these machines to combine the cardboard, polyethylene, and ink from an ink factory that combined dyes and surfactants to create several colors to print the carton. These cartons are shipped to the milk processor, which takes the milk it received from the dairy farm, puts it in the cartons, and seals it. These different components were shipped from one place to another by truck, plane, rail, and ship. Workers often loaded and unloaded them using cranes and forklifts created by more engineers and manufacturers. Eventually, all this creation and transportation led to the arrival of these items at your local grocery store, where workers unloaded them and put them on shelves. Cleaners and repair workers constantly maintain the store and its contents. Finally, a checker may have rung up your purchases, and a bagger may have bagged them for you. You, as a consumer, have the power to influence the cost and quality of the products you purchase. You paid all of these people, hundreds or thousands of them, as part of the price of your groceries. So, they all affect the cost of your groceries. If these individuals are competent and hardworking, your groceries will cost less and be of higher quality. Conversely, if they are less qualified or lazy, your groceries will cost more and could even pose a health risk. This underscores the crucial role of individual competence in the cost and quality of the products you purchase, making you a responsible and aware consumer. The competence of all those thousands of people you pay to get the goods you purchase is the primary determiner of the cost and quality of the final product. If you want quality products at reasonable prices, then you, as the end employer of thousands of folks, want the middlemen, the companies you buy from, to hire employees based on merit. The companies you buy from are your agents, hiring employees on your behalf to create the things you want to purchase. The importance of merit-based hiring practices cannot be overstated. They ensure a fair and just employment system, which ultimately benefits you as a consumer by providing you with high-quality products at reasonable prices. Never forget, that every peoson that has a hand in the design, manufature, transportation, and sales of the products you buy is your employee. You are the one paying them. They work for you. You have the right to demand the best. They should work as hard for you as you worked to earn the money to pay them. Metitocracy matters. Hire the best, you deserve it. For more on this topic you may want to read: The Achievement Economy.
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